title: Body weight in the Finnish Twin Cohort.
abstract: We estimated genetic and environmental variance of BMI among 7245 non-pregnant MZ and DZ pairs of the same sex from the population-based Finnish Twin Cohort. The contributions of additive genetic effects, shared and non-shared environmental effects on age-adjusted BMI-variance were estimated by LISREL structural equation models. Genetic effects contribute 72% in men and 66.4% in non-pregnant women of total variance, while 27.8% of variance among men and 33.6% among women is due to non-shared environmental effects. Shared environmental effects were nonsignificant (0% for women and 0.2% for men). Similar values were obtained for hereditary and non-shared environmental effects, when shared environmental effects were not included in the model. The inclusion of pregnant women did not substantially change heritability estimates.
authors.affiliation: Department of Public Health, University of Helsinki, Finland.
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Turula
authors.forename: J
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Kaprio
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Rissanen
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Koskenvuo
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D015992:Body Mass Index; D001835:Body Weight / Q000235:genetics*; D015331:Cohort Studies; D004777:Environment; D005260:Female; D005387:Finland / Q000453:epidemiology; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009765:Obesity / Q000453:epidemiology / Q000235:genetics / Q000503:physiopathology; D014429:Twins, Dizygotic / Q000235:genetics*; D014430:Twins, Monozygotic / Q000235:genetics*